The fist was the size of a small sandbag and moving fast.
Jude grabbed both teammates by the collar and hauled them sideways. The fist connected with the wall where Constantine's head had been, and the plaster didn't slow it down — the hand went through clean, taking a section of drywall with it, and the chickens in the coops went absolutely berserk.
"These are the same old moves you use at midnight?!" Jude called over the noise.
"Broadly, yes!" Constantine was already looking around for something useful. "Don't worry — I have a way to handle this!"
The giant pulled his fist out of the wall. Half the structure came with it. He turned back toward them with the patient, uncomplicated focus of something that had been given a single instruction and intended to complete it.
Jude weighed his options in approximately two seconds. He had the gun. He had the Beast Ring and gauntlets in his bag, which would have allowed him to meet this on more even terms. But Constantine had said this thing was on Midnight's side, which meant breaking every bone in its body was probably a bad start to a working relationship.
He reached into his pocket and produced a small mushroom that shimmered faintly through the colour spectrum — seven distinct hues cycling across its cap in sequence.
Hypno-Shroom (with planting rights and supplemental sunshine licence) Cost: 50,000 AP Note: Zombies are our friends. They are profoundly misunderstood. Zombies play a vital and underappreciated role in our ecosystem. We can — and should — invest more effort in teaching them to think like us. — The Hypno-Shroom
The giant charged. Jude threw the mushroom in a clean arc. It struck the man squarely in the open mouth — dissolved on contact, gone before he could spit it out, carried down his throat by the simple biological momentum of a man who'd been mid-roar.
The change was immediate and total. The giant stopped. Blinked. Looked around the room as though he'd only just arrived in it and was pleasantly surprised by what he found. Then he stood very still, no longer particularly interested in anyone, apparently at peace with the universe.
Constantine lit a cigarette and regarded him. "I was about to say I had a method."
"You can use it next time." Jude lowered his hand. "These work on opponents who aren't especially bright — make them hallucinate, see us as allies. About an hour of effect."
"To be fair," Constantine said, "it's not so much that he isn't smart. He can't be smart. He doesn't have a brain." He exhaled. "That's a zombie. Voodoo tradition — they call it a resurrected corpse. The specifics of the process are Midnight's business and he doesn't discuss them, but the short version is: living person goes in, this comes out." He gestured at the man, who was still standing with an expression of serene contentment. "Loyal. Strong. Doesn't slack, doesn't complain, doesn't ask for healthcare or overtime pay. One weakness."
"Which is?"
"Being scolded. Terrified of it. You can stop one of these with a sufficiently angry tone of voice."
Jude watched the giant standing peacefully among the panicking chickens and thought about the implications.
"Thank God this technology isn't widely available," he said. "American employers would never hire a living person again."
Click. The intercom on the wall crackled to life.
"Idiot. Why haven't you brought the rooster up yet? Have you forgotten how to use the elevator again?"
The zombie's response to the voice from the speaker was immediate and physical — it shrank, cowered, and descended to the floor in the practiced way of something that had learned to make itself small under displeasure.
Constantine's grin appeared. "That's the master's voice." He crouched, picked up a white rooster from the floor near the coops — the bird, confused by the sudden change in its circumstances, expressed itself loudly but didn't escape — and deposited it in Lester's arms. "Hold this. Try to look calm." He straightened and headed for the elevator. "Come on. Let's go see an old friend."
The penthouse opened into the green. Even through the elevator doors, Jude could smell it — that particular density of living plant matter, damp soil, the faint animal musk of something warm-blooded moving in undergrowth. The doors slid apart and he stepped into the kind of light that only came through glass when the sun was at a specific angle: gold, specific, the colour of late afternoon made architectural.
Papa Midnight had changed clothes. He was standing at the far end of the space holding a staff — carved in a style that suggested both authority and considerable age — wearing a white top hat and a white tailcoat over nothing underneath, with a grass skirt completing the ensemble and his dark thighs very much in evidence below it. He was built like something that had never needed a gym because nature had handled the matter.
He had, clearly, been expecting his zombie.
"Dead man," he said, without turning, "I'm warning you. If you can't manage a simple—"
"Midnight," Constantine said warmly. "You look well. Is this a new hat?"
Midnight turned. His expression went through several phases in rapid sequence, ending somewhere between fury and a grudging acknowledgement that he should have anticipated exactly this.
Constantine was already moving through the trees with the breezy confidence of a man who'd walked into unwelcoming rooms his entire adult life and had simply stopped allowing them to be unwelcoming. "Lovely greenhouse, by the way. Very Kew Gardens. Very restrained." He arrived at Midnight's side and clapped the man on the shoulder. "Your watchdog let us up. Well — he roared a bit first, but he's settled now. Gentle soul, really."
Midnight's gaze moved to Jude, who had caught up and was taking in the staff, the altar behind it, the row of skulls arranged with a specificity that suggested each one was there for a reason. Then it moved to Lester, who was holding the rooster with the careful attention of someone grateful for something to do with his hands.
"You even brought the chicken," Midnight said, flatly.
"We try to be helpful."
The staff came up. Jude read the angle and decided it was more threat than intent — but only just.
"Constantine." Midnight's voice had gone very quiet, which in Jude's experience was usually worse than loud. "You owe me fifty thousand dollars."
"About that—"
"You cheated me out of fifty thousand dollars and now you're standing in my greenhouse asking me for something. You have the nerve of Satan himself."
"A genuine compliment and I'll take it." Constantine's expression didn't flicker. "I need your help. And I know that sounds rich — but Midnight, something large is happening in this city right now, and it's going to get considerably larger." His voice shifted into a register Jude hadn't heard from him yet: still casual on the surface, but underneath it, absolutely serious. "You felt it already. I know you did. You were up here asking your skulls about it an hour ago." He held Midnight's gaze. "Its name is Mnemoth. A true hungry spirit — not infernal, not celestial, born in the human world and operating without constraints. Right now it's out there treating New York like a personal banquet, and it's only been here two days." A pause. "You felt it. You know what it's going to look like in another two."
The staff didn't lower. But Midnight's expression changed.
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